NationStates Jolt Archive

In ages past, Tsathoggua, Cxaxukluth and their kind migrated from Xoth to the great world Yuggoth, and settled there for a time. Eventually, the cannibalistic appetites of Cxaxukluth forced his family to flee, but he himself remains to this day. In his time on Yuggoth Cxaxukluth spawned dread creatures. Many of these left their lord's care and wandered the wastes of Yuggoth, singly or banding together to prey on the few settlers not worthy of note in histories of that world. Eventually they formed great nomadic bands of beasts, each grotesque and misshapen in a different horrific way. They preyed on each other, and whatever they could get beyond that, roaming the land in a ravenous hunt for sustenance. Eventually, they came together, forming permanent cities, and from that point their history formed a grotesque paralell of mankind, developing hideous arcane technology founded on the worship of the dread lord they left long ago.

Some thousands of years after this nameless demonic civilisation first clawed, slithered and screeched their way up into the stars, the Mi-go came. Over many centuries the fungal beasts took advantage of the chaotic nature of the demonic civilisation and purged them almost completely from Yuggoth. Those few who remained crammed themselves into what demonic starcraft remained and fled into deep space, in a deep sleep to be awoken by their discovery by beings they could rule, feed on or sacrifice to their lord.

The five great sleeper ships of the Nameless Spawn resembled the bloated corpses of massive spaceborne whales, an unhealthy grey colour, constructed of some hell-spawned metal. Small blisters containing ancient weapons systems dotted the hulls without any kind of reasoning behind their placement, and had any scanners got past the distortions naturally thrown out by the drive systems they would have seen that on the inside, the ships just didn't make sense, that the angles didn't add up and space seemed to twist and tear within the ships. Likewise, the systems would have made no sense, being almost entirely unidentifiable and often with no kind of connections between them.

Unfortunately, there are always those who would try to investigate such anomalies. Such a group of people was the crew of the human starship Reverence, a science vessel scouting the massive anomalies that the sleeper ships were projecting around them. The boxy silver vessel soon found out the pointlessness of trying to penetrate the aura of distortions and tried something else. On the bridge the captain ordered the opening of a subspace channel.

"This is the United Earth Government scientific survey ship Reverence, hailing the unidentified objects. If you are crewed starships, we wish you to understand that we are friendly, and wish you no harm. Please respond, if you can."

As soon as the signal was broadcast a system that controlled the stasis of the demonic crew of the sleeper fleet activated, awaking the monsters. It was an hour before the reverence got an answer. The audio of the message was a horrible, terrifying, almost madness-inducing cacophony of different noises, but in the minds of everyone that heard it, the message was clear.

We will meet with you, fleshy thing.

Almost the second the message was finished, the bridge darkened and space twisted, creating the effect of all the angles being more than is physically possible. Soon, the hazy forms of four pulpy, disgusting creatures began to coalesce in front of the captain. Much like their ships, the creatures made no sense. They were vaguely humanoid in outline, but that was the only uniformity to them. Tentacles jutted from random points, some terminating in horrendous claws or cruel-looking stingers. Eyes covered their flesh, each different, each horribly disturbing. The surface of their skins shifted subtly, like a heat haze but barely noticable.

You will serve us.

The bridge of the science ship filled with screams of terror and insanity, screams soon echoed throughout the ship as more of the creatures materialised.

OOC:

Interesting. If my nation's FT variant were fully worked out, I'd post an IC response to this of some sort. As it is my best option right now is what you see here.

In any case, it does look good. These creatures sound a bit like the Zerg, I think.

[[Kind of like Zerg, but not a hive, not a product of any kind of evolutionary process, and not entirely of this universe. :D]]

((I do so love Great Old One/Elder God type beings :D Lovecraft would be proud))

[[Kind of like Zerg, but not a hive, not a product of any kind of evolutionary process, and not entirely of this universe. :D]]

OOC:

I thank you for clearing that up, friend. I'll have my FT variant drawn up soon, and perhaps then we can do some RPing? You look like you'd be a lot of fun to work with.

OOC:

I thank you for clearing that up, friend. I'll have my FT variant drawn up soon, and perhaps then we can do some RPing? You look like you'd be a lot of fun to work with.

[[It'd be great to get some RPing done. I look forward to it.]]

[[It'd be great to get some RPing done. I look forward to it.]]

OOC:

Excellent, and finding an appropriate scenario shouldn't be too hard. Luslyvania's variants are all Human nations.

OOC: FT Vetalia is a completely mechanized world that wants to upgrade as much of the intelligent life it encounters to robotic or cybernetic organisms as part of its goal of optimizing the potential of the entire universe and using it to achieve knowledge and total dominance over all who oppose it.

So, we'd probably end up fighting your invasion simply because it poses a threat to our pursuit of order...and is terribly organic.

OOC: FT Vetalia is a completely mechanized world that wants to upgrade as much of the intelligent life it encounters to robotic or cybernetic organisms as part of its goal of optimizing the potential of the entire universe and using it to achieve knowledge and total dominance over all who oppose it.

So, we'd probably end up fighting your invasion simply because it poses a threat to our pursuit of order...and is terribly organic.

[[It's not organic as is our understanding of organic, though. They're the stuff of other universes.]]

SoY: I was wondering about that...

Vetalia: Well then, I'd probably eventually be fighting you as well.

Hell, why not? Let's all just kill each other, eh?

[[It's not organic as is our understanding of organic, though. They're the stuff of other universes.]]

Then that's even worse...our society can't stand things that we consider to be deviants from our conception of the known universes.

[[When in doubt, go to war.]]

The Tau Custodian battleship Air hammer sat in the Warp, the ocean of thoughts and emotions in energy form, swirling in random patterns, completly unpredictable, like the flow of a sea. Humans had long known of the Warp, using phycic beings called navigators to help them cross this great swirling expance, the Tau lacked such an ability.....though they had developed their own method of traveling through the Warp. Warp energy is converted into matter. When spectrographed it was found that all Warp matter and energy is linked together, meaning that a spectrograph provided a complete map of the entirity of Warp space.

Commander Bloodtide stared at the Warp sphere, viewing the many swirling pattens of energy, wondering who much of that energy had been created through beings that failed to follow the Greater Good. When the reverence was boarded and its crew sent spirling into mind numbing fear a massive flare of energy into the Warp, showing up on the scanner, like a flower blooming in a garden. Bloodtide was intreagued, something that could cause such a massive flare could likely cause a major threat to the Empire, and he had been waiting for a chance to move up to the rank of Shas'O.....

With a mighty flash the Air hammer dropped out of the Warp, its weapon's already being activated after three days of being offline.

It was mere hours before the influence of the aura of the nameless spawn of Yuggoth had twisted the Reverence. The crew had quickly turned into 200 gibbering terrified savages, wailing and gnashing their teeth, screaming the praises of Cxaxukluth. One of the insane fanatics stared manically at his sensor screen observing the patterns of dimensions that occasionally overlayed over our own. A blip appeared, a large ship.

"Lord priest, dread mighty Cxaxukluth has blessed us with a chance to serve him! A ship approaches us through another dimension, no doubt drawn here by your presence."

The 'lord priest' the savage referred to was one of the nameless spawn of Yuggoth, draped in the freshly-flayed skin of the former captain of the Reverence, wreathed in the horrifying aura of his kind. Several of the eyes scattered across his body blinked with an awful squelching noise. Several of his tentacles began to wave manically, and he screeched in the maddnening language of hs people. At the sound, one of the crewmen of Reverence drew his sidearm and shot several ensigns who had gathered on the bridge to worship their new lord, before shooting himself.

I have informed the spawn. We show them Cxaxukluth's glory.

One of the whale-like sleeper ships turned from the rest, which promptly melted away from realspace into some hellish dimension that would give them sanctuary. Energies not seen in this universe for aeons built up in the bulk of the demon-ship, whilst Reverence simply prepared to stay out of the way.

The Xilare-class cruiser Chiron slipped quietly through the darkness of space, its sensors picking up the horrific transmissions emanating from the Reverence. It noticed another ship had appeared, most likely human, but ignored in favor of what was occurring on the science vessel ahead.

Captain 1st-rank Eta-3118 stood at the ship's bridge, looking out at the black space beyond. Something here was wrong, terribly wrong...he decided it would be a wise idea to call in the Negators to take a look at the situation. He sat down in one of the command chairs and interfaced with the ship's on-board AI in order to encrypt a message to the Vetalian Navy.

"This is ship Chiron, Captain 1st-rank Eta-3118 reporting in. I've detected some strange activity occurring in this sector, and I can't for the life of me determine what is going on. I've encoded a transmission of what we heard, and honestly it doesn't sound human at all. Frankly, I've never heard it before, ever."

"Captain Eta-3118, I am unable to transmit the message at this time. Temporal disturbances in the region associated with warp drive usage have interrupted our communications. I will try again in another hour"

Captain Eta said nothing. Rather than order it to try again, he decided to wait. A very human fear was rising in him, of a kind far deeper and far more primitive than any he had felt since he became a machine. He subconsciously lowered his metallic hand to the sidearm he always kept on his person.

"Arm the weapons systems. I want all personnel ready in the event of attack"

Somewhere in the twisted space inside the spawn ship, in some dark corner approximating a command centre, the creature co-ordinating the craft noted the arrival of the new ship, and decided to broadcast a transmission to all ships in the area. Once more, they would hear the screeching cacophony with their ears, but the pure message with their minds.

The Dreaded Lord Cxaxukluth has guided us to this point. To our awakening. Our servants speak for us. We go.

The energies building up inside the sleeper-ship dissipated instantly, and the ship was blasted into whatever dimension its fellows had entered, leaving Reverence and its spawn commander to whatever fate was destined to befall it in this system. The science ship was not built for combat, armed with a couple of missile tubes and a low-power deflector screen, and the officers assigned to their used were lost in worship. The spawn inside opted to have a human talk to the new arrivals.

Fleshy thing. Speak with your own.

"Yes, yes, revered master!"
The terrified cultist activated the viewscreen, opened a channel and stood to attention, amidst the chaos of the worship going on. However calm he looked, madness and fear made themselves clear in his voice.

"This is the temple-ship Reverence of the cult of Cxaxukluth, woe to his enemies. I speak for his revered nameless spawn! Identify yourselves!"

Bloodtide frowned to him self inside his Chrisis suit, though no one could see him do so. It seemed that the Warp flare had definatly been caused by something going terriebly wrong on this ship, just looking at the crew member on the view screen in front of him reminded him of Chaos worshipers, filled with fear, and likely gone insane from it.

"I am Commander Bloodtide of the enlightened Tau Empire. We have come to investigate the massive Warp flare which seems to have been created by your ship. What happened to you, your ships matchs that of a small human enclave that we have encountered but......it sems warped, changed. What has happened here?"

OOC:

I'll be joining this soon, people...I just need to work out what tech base I'm using and then I'm set.

[[Just a very short post this one, sorry.]]

"Our lord happened! We... WE are enlightened. The spawn of Cxaxukluth came to us, they showed us his power... He is the god who eats gods! He is the Sleeper of N'kai! We spread his dread word through ritual and worship, in the hopes that one day we too might become his children! We invite all who wish to one day hold the favour of the Sleeper of N'kai to come, and join our festivities! The temple ships are open to all, none are forbidden to enter."

The spawn remained out of the viewscreen's way, hissing audibly, surrounded by the chaos of the crew, by now completely lost to their madness.

Bloodtide stared at the view screen for several seconds, taking in all of the depraved activitys going on in the background and the insanity in the faces of all the crew. The spokes person was babbleing on about some form of god, yet another group of humans had strayed from the Path of the Greater Good, like so many others, but this was worse than just failing to follow the path, they had been twisted.....and only one force known to the Tau did anything like this, Chaos....

Bloodtide made his decision, "Break off all comunication with the ship, mark them as under Chaos quarintine. I want a Drone torpedo preped and fired at that ship, we need to do a complete search of that ship, and we can't risk troops against possible corruption." he said to a nearby Air caste ensign, before turning to his second in command.
"Tell the Blood maidens squad to prepair their Chrisis suits ready, if we need to go to combat then I want to be on the front line, and I need my Ta'lissera with me."

A flash of light appeared right next to the Tau ship, and a massive, one point two kilometer long ship appeared as if it had been willed there by some benevolent deity. It didn't seem the crew had noticed the Tau, and they just floated on forward into space, not really paying attention to anything.

On board the bridge, the Captain of the ship tapped his fingers on the arm rest of his chair, obviously aggitated.

"Tell me, Ensign Arleigh," he began. "When I said make an unprogrammed jump into our galaxy, what part of that request did you not understand?"

The Ensign was nervously twitching, twiddling her thumbs and stuttering as she tried to come up with an answer.

The Captain waved his hand. "Ensign, you're dismissed from duty," he said firmly. "Send up Lieutenant Athenasus to replace you at your station. I expect a full report as to why you hesitated at my request on my desk in six hours."

The young Ensign sauntered off, looking as if she were about to cry, but Fironen brushed the thought off his mind. He looked to his tactical officer, Commander Rhine.

"Commander, is there anything near us?" Fironen sounded exasperated and tired.

"Yes, Captain, there is," replied his tactical officer. "When we defolded into real-space, we did so right next to a Tau vessel, and it is several kilometers behind us now. There's also another ship of unknown origin a few hundred kilometers ahead of us."

"Comms, hail them both," he said. "I wanna find out where the hell we are."

"Aye, sir," said the comms officer, opening up a wide-band channel. "The channel is ready for you, sir."

"Thank you, Lieutenant Ashton," Fironen replied. "At least I have a few competent officers around here..."

This is Captain Fironen Selinorasi of the SDF-47 Orgus. Could anyone out here tell us where we are, and what's going on around here?

IC:

USLS Alakanuk.

Captain Bertram Dorman, USLN paced the bridge of his Anchorage-class frigate, waiting impatiently until his vessel left Hyperspace. His sensors had just recently confirmed some information given to him by the security station in the Puckapunyal System. The scanners indicated something was indeed at his destination area.

Exactly what it was, they could not say, though from what his sensors operators could tell it appeared there might well be some Tau forces. That alone was possibly bad. His people had little to no contact with the Tau, but, what they knew about them suggested they were incredibly aggressive, serving the Greater Good or some nonsensical garbage, conquering independent worlds for no practical reason at all.

He wasn’t really worried about the Tau. He was confident that if they made trouble, when it was all over, they would be dead. He was troubled by this second contact, the one that a long-ranged scan couldn’t really catch all that well.

“Captain,” said the helmsman. “We are dropping into normal space.”

“Very well, Helm. Tactical, make ready to load the usual snap-shots.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” replied the rating on the weapons station. The snap-shots were procedure in the USLN. Basically, in situations such as these his warship would keep two torpedoes loaded and ready for every unknown vessel present.

“Entering normal space…now,” said the helmsman.

From there, things were essentially basic clockwork. Alakanuk’s scanners scoped the area immediately upon arrival, and six tubes were loaded.

OOC:

Essentially, the Alakanuk is a cruiser, though in my nation’s parlance, she is a frigate. She is simply out investigating an unknown sensors echo.

My nation's FTL variant is the United Systems of Luslyvania, a federal presidential republic.

I'll post more information as it is finalized, and eventually a small fact sheet.

Across the barrier between universes, the malevolent minds of the spawn pondered the situation. The system was fast becoming crowded with ships coming to investigate the system. If more interlopers arrived, the best-laid plans of the spawn would be compromised.

Fleshy things continue to intrude.

This is intolerable. They will praise Him or they will cease.

Our tools must survive. They must spread the word.

We will pull our tools out of harm's way.


The initial orgy of violent worship on Reverence had died down, and now many of the crew mindlessly went about their tasks in the now dark and twisted confines of their ship. Scrawled prayers in untranslatable languages covered the walls, and crude shrines were dotted around the ship, some of them surrounded by dazed cultists.
On the bridge the cultist chosen to speak prepared for another transmission. He had been informed of the new arrivals by an ensign covered in some kind of war-paint, and now he prepared to greet them with a message of the glories of their dread lord.

"Welcome to this system, worthless unbelievers! Welcome to this holy place of the re-emergence of the children of Cxaxukluth, the missionaries of his terrible religion. All are welcome, none will be sent away. All can redeem themselves of their hideous worthlessness by offering their souls at his banquet! No soul is beyond the salvation of total oblivion in his service."

OOC: Just to let you know I'm not usually overally aggressive, and nether are the Tau. They usually attempt to get thier diplomates to see the true path of the Greater Good before they send in combat ships. I would have done this but since to my guys the cultists seem like Chaos their was no point. cos Chaos don't listen to reason :)

IC: As the cultists speaker sent yet another message urging others to join thier cult the Air Hammer slowly turned so that its main mass driver cannons were pointed directly at the ship. If neccessary the Tau ship could have fired off a salvo of torpedo's that would travel at half the speed of light, but instead a single, far slower, object was launched. It resembled a cone, its flat base providing engine thrust once it left the mass driver while the point was equipt with a boarding drill and atmosphere entrapment fields. As the Cone hit the side of the Reverence it quickly bored a hole in the hull, its energy fields activating to keep the atmosphere inside the ship from escaping. When the top of the cone had made it through the hull it began to split right down the middle, opening to reviel racks of Gun and Shield drones. Slowly each drone left its rack, formed into its preprogrammed squad and began to search the ship for signs of Chaos infestation, little did they know what horrors they would find inside.

As soon as they entered the ship, the drones would have immediately noticed the skins of several crewmen sacrificed in horrible ways to the patron deity of the cultists, and the vile statues crudely carved from their bones. Mindless gibbering creatures followed the drones in the darkness, fruitlessly attempting to scare the machines. Although their task was pointless, it was not without uses. The spawn-priest that now commanded the Reverence felt the excitement of the cultists that harassed the drones radiating throughout his ship, and let out a great cry of outrage that could be heard throughout the ship, causing the cultists to fling themselves to the ground, cringing and whimpering.

The spawn stormed out of the bridge, pulpy tentacles waving in the darkness, heading for the location of the interlopers.

We rip, we tear, we destroy the metal things!

Clutched in one of the creature's claws was an intricate bladed weapon, a longsword covered in small notches and hideous carvings depicting beings from the homeworld of the spawn, bloated monsters that towered over engraved humanoid figures that constantly shifted across the dull grey-green blade.

Fironen stared at the viewscreen, observing the cultist captain with less interest than he had for Chaos itself. He just stared, and then he finally groaned, dropping his head into his hand. He lifted his hand into the air and made a bit of a twirling motion with his hand.

"We really don't have time for this," he said. "Comms, tell the Tau ship to pull up directly behind ours."

"Aye sir," replied the comms officer.

"Commander Rhine," he addressed his tactical officer. "Ready the main gun. Target the small, tainted vessel and wait for my order to fire."

"Aye sir," Rhine replied, who quickly began relaying orders to the gunnery crew several dozen decks below.

Attention, nearby Tau vessel. We have determined that the tainted vessel nearby is subject to our means of extermination. Please maneuver your vessel directly aft of our own and raise your forward shield matrix to double standard power.

Now, very few outsiders ever witnessed the awesome power of the Reflex Cannon on the Macross-class SDFs, but here's a brief description on how powerful this weapon is. Imagine, if you will, a weapon strong enough to overload the shield matrix of a Mark IV Star Destroyer in one shot and permanently remove its ability to function at all until it could be replaced. Such a weapon could vapourize ships much smaller than that, unless they, by some will of a deity, happened to contain a Mark IV SD's shield matrix onboard. Now, anything smaller and weaker than a Mark IV wouldn't need to be directly in front of the blast to be hit. If anything smaller than a Mark IV or anything that does not happen to have any shields whatsoever happens to be within fifteen kilometers of the circumference of the shot, it'll have whatever hull-plating facing the beam melted right off, and then probably explode due to interior components of the ship being exposed to the intense heat of the beam. Now, you all might think that's wankish, but a superlaser has more power than this thing. Hell, the Death Star blows up planets. The Reflex Cannon leaves a healthy Lake Tahoe-sized crater in the crust of a planet, and the subsequent shockwave levels everything around the crater for about two hundred miles.

Powerful? Yes.

Wankish? Less so in comparison to the Death Star.:rolleyes:

"This is Tau vessel Air hammer to unknown alien vessel, we have detected a power build up in your ship, and , coupled with your recent message we are assuming that you are prepering to fire a weapon. We must request that you abort your firing immediatly as we have a team onboard the possible chaos ship investigating wether it is corrupted. So far the search results show none of the usually signs and so we believe a diffrent force to be at work here. Again we repeat, please abort firing"

Mean while, on the Reverence

Three drone squads had been lost already, each one taken down from behind and the attacker was so fast that each squad hadn't had time to even face thier opponent. As the final squad headed towards the last known coordinates of thrid squad they finally came face to face with thier attacker, as the Spawn slowly emmerged from the shadows in front of them...

“Well, this is turning into quite the little party, isn’t it?”

Looking at the monitors displaying sensory readings, Captain Dorman felt a bit uneasy as his ship steadily kept gaining more and more company.

“Sir, that first vessel looks like a Human ship.” His XO, Commander Deana Keys pointed her hand at the bridge’s primary display screen.

“It would also seem the Tau have boarded that ship,” Dorman replied.

“Yes, Sir, it does,” answered Keys.

“Well,” Dorman mused. “What do we know about the Human starship?”

“Reverence is the ship’s name, Sir,” said Keys. “She’s registered as UEG.”

“Very well,” Dorman said. “Prepare a Marine Boarding Unit.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” answered Keys.

*********

“Get on the shuttle! Move it, Marines! Get on the shuttle!”

Marine Corps Platoon Sergeant Ezra Cockrell herded the Marines of his platoon on to the light assault shuttle as Platoon CO Ensign Stephanie Jernigan watched. Battle-armored Marines clambered up the ramp quickly, Jernigan loping up the ramp alongside Cockrell last.

In all, 43 Marines were packed aboard the shuttle, which set out quickly.

Meanwhile, aboard the Alakanuk, Captain Dorman sounded General Quarters and directed his communications officers to call for reinforcements.

In the other place, where the sleeper fleet escaped to, the gathered clerics of the god of the spawn stood and watched events with malevolent eyes.

The fleshy things prepare to fire their weapon.

Our hand protects the faithful, as promised.

All the misshapen eyes of the gathered spawn shut, with an audible sound like a ball of mucus hitting a brick wall.

A pocket of space around and inside the Reverence warped and twisted, creating a pocket of the unstable conditions most favoured by the spawn, warping the forms of the cultists within and creating electromagnetic bursts and spatial anomalies where our universe met the warped space. Inside the ship, the cultists twisted and writhed as they were changed by the new conditions, but they would live. They were protected by the will of the clerics of the spawn. They would live, as something more, or perhaps less than human.

The spawn that stalked the corridors of Rverence felt something analogous toa surge of confidence as the ship groaned under the stresses of this new space. This was his preferred environment, it was his home. When he finally reached the final squad of drones, rather than dicing them up with his blade, he had another fate in mind for them. He faced them,a nd delivered a message.

Fleshy things: do not insult the spawn with the presence of machine-creatures. The spawn are coming, the spawn will bring order. The Sleeper of N'kai will have his feast!

In the environment of twisted space, the spawn can make use of their full array of abilities. In this case, with a swift gesture, the spawn ripped the drones apart telekinetically, leaving a pile of torn metal and shorted parts on the constantly shifting floor.

comm channel opened to all ships with in 1 AU
"This is Tau commander Bloodtide to all nearby vessels. The human vessel Reverence has been placed under quarrintine while we investigate the possability of corruption due to Chaos. All vessels are asked to cease any hostile actions towards the ship and to cancel any boarding actions until such a time that wehave completed our investigation. Failure to comply will result in immediate action by this ship. If you wish to join us in our investigation or view the data we have already collected please message me on this channel, Bloodtide out"
Message ends

Slowly the Air Hammer moved to the space above the distroted space that covered the Reverence , launching squads of Barracuda class superiority fighters and Manta missile destroyers. Once it was in possition it released its main defence, three warden class frigetes, each one having been released from specialy designed grav hooks on the ships underside. each Warden moved to a possition around the sides of the distortion, creating a defencive perimeter.

Fironen listened to the message from the Tau commander quietly, taking in every ill-spoken word of it. Cease hostile actions? On a Chaos ship? How many idiots have to die before someone realizes that ceasing hostile actions against a Chaos ship leads to such results as corruption and total annihalation? Fironen sighed, motioning to his comms officer.

"Open up the channel again," he said with an exasperated tone.

"Done, sir," said Lieutenant Ashton.

"Good," Fironen said. "I like efficiency."

Attention, Shas'o Bloodtide of the Tau'va. Due to your lack of proper initiative in handling this situation with what is supposedly a Chaos-tainted ship, the Copen Protectorate ship Orgus will handle it in the best-proved method of dealing with such things. I, Captain Fironen Selinorasi, hereby reserve full authority to utilize the destructive force of the Main Reflex Cannon, and I am employing it with full predjudice against this tainted ship. If you do not stand aside from the ship, your men, as well as yourself, will be considered acceptable casualties. You have one human minute to comply.

Fironen rested his head upon his left hand, which the same arm helped hold it up by using the left arm-rest as a point of balance. He waved his right hand towards his tactical officer.

"Commander Rhine," he began, "redirect all power from the beam cannons and the rail cannons and focus them into the pin-point barrier system, and then have the ship's AI take control of the pin-point barrier system. Also inform all Destroid brigades to take positions in the exterior alcove bunkers on the ship's hull. Inform the Monster Destroids that they'll be our substitutes for ship-to-ship combat while the other guns are inopperable. All other Destroids are to be used for anti-fighter, anti-ship, or anti-missile duties."

"Aye, sir," replied Rhine. "Relaying the recording I made of your order to all sectors of the ship."

"Wait," Fironen stated. "You recorded my voice again? Gods damnit all, I told you not to do that anymore!"

"I'm sorry, sir," replied Rhine, "but it's just so much easier to do it that way than to have to relay them word for-"

"Bah!" Fironen huffed. "Whatever, so long as the job is completed." Fironen faced out towards the Tau ships, who were encircling the Reverence. "And Commander?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Remind me to smack you later..."

"Sir?"

"Yes, Commander?"

"Smack me later."

"Damn you..."